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Valentine's Day

For 71 years, 2 sisters sent the same 1941 Valentine's card back and forth. This year, a tradition endures.

Karina Bland
Arizona Republic

PHOENIX – Bobbie Gorsline was looking for Valentine's Day greeting cards, sorting through the small selection, trying to find just the right one.

She picked up a heart-shaped card printed with flowers and two bluebirds, adorned with a real red feather, that said, “Valentine Greetings to My Sister.”

It was a rare find in 1941, a time before big greeting card companies, which today produce cards for sisters, sisters-in-law, stepsisters, half-sisters, big sisters, little sisters, and friends who seem like sisters.

The verse inside perfectly described Bobbie, who was 21 at the time, and her sister, Jean Coppins, 23, who lived in what was then East Detroit, Michigan. They’d always been close.

Bobbie had never seen a card like this one. She bought it and on Valentine’s Day, she gave it to Jean.

Jean was so delighted that she saved it. It was the perfect card, so perfect that the next year, on Valentine's Day, she gave it back to Bobbie.

Bobbie hung onto the card. The year after, she sent it to Jean.

It was the beginning of a tradition that would endure for 71 years.

And it wouldn’t end there.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Jean Coppins was the second oldest of seven children born to Robert and Minnie Gorsline in East Detroit, Mich. Bobbie Snider was the third.

Jean was the second of seven children. Bobbie was the third. They grew up in a tiny house with no electricity or plumbing. Their brother, Chuck, the only boy, hauled water from a neighbor’s well at the far end of the street.

The girls called their mother an angel. Their father was anything but. He was a taxi driver who spent a lot of time in the neighborhood bar. At home, he barked orders from his recliner. 

The kids looked out for one another, all seven of them, but Bobbie and Jean were especially close.

Jean married James Coppins in 1939. Three years later, Bobbie married Everett Snider.

While Everett was away in the Army, she lived with Jean  and James. 

When Bobbie had her first child, a girl, she named her Jean. Sandy came next, followed by Gary and Dale.

Jean had six children: Jimmy, John, Judy, Janet, Jerry and Joyce.

Their children grew up together.

Jean's daughter, Judy, remembers going to Bobbie’s house one day, her parents bringing a half-gallon of ice cream frozen so solid that their spoons bent when they tried to dish it up. Her dad cut it into slices with a hacksaw.

In 1953, Bobbie and her family moved to Phoenix. The sisters visited regularly and kept in touch by phone and letters. Years later, when Jean and then Bobbie were widowed, their visits sometimes stretched to a month at a time.

Sandy and Judy were 6 when they were split up. After Judy graduated from high school, she and a friend took a Greyhound bus to Phoenix to visit Sandy. The cousins kept in touch, just like their mothers, getting together for weddings and other family events and visiting when they could.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Sisters Jean Coppins and Bobbie Snider sent the same Valentine's Day card back and forth for 71 years.

Over all those years, Bobbie and Jean sent the Valentine card back and forth, never missing a year.

The verse inside said, “Remember when we two were kids — 

And all the scraps we had?

Remember all the good times, too,

That used to make us glad?

Here’s something else that I recall —

I thought a lot of you!

Don’t you forget that, either,

‘cause, doggone it, I still do!”

The sisters sometimes made notations inside the card. Other times, they wrote on notepaper and enclosed it in the envelope.

In the bottom left corner, Jean did the math one year: 2004 minus 1941 equals 63. She wrote, “Still going strong. It’s seen a lot of miles but when it gets to you, I know it will bring smiles.”

On a sheet of notepaper printed with a ladybug and watering can dated Feb. 10, 2006, Jean wrote, “Love you more even more each year. I never saw a better Valentine.”

“2008! Sure got our money out of this card and it is still great!” Jean wrote in the upper left corner.

Near the top of the card, Bobbie wrote, “70 years and I still love you more.”

In 2011, Bobbie wrote on the back of a flowered sheet of notepaper, “This is going to fall apart one of these years!” Underneath that, the next year, Jean wrote, “I love you best of anybody!”

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Whenever sisters Bobbie Snider and Jean Coppins were together, they would giggle like they were girls. It was contagious, Jean’s daughter, Judy Neisch, said.

On her backyard patio in Phoenix, Bobbie's daughter, Sandy Mettille, flipped through the pages of an album, pointing out pictures of her mother and aunt.

Although they were close, Jean and Bobbie weren’t all that much alike. 

“Everyone called Aunt Jean a saint because she never, never got mad,” Sandy said. Her mom, Bobbie, had a temper.

Bobbie collected angels. Jean collected clowns.

Jean loved the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers. Bobbie wasn’t much interested in sports, though she’d pay attention when the Red Wings played the Arizona Coyotes. She’d tease Jean if the Coyotes beat the Red Wings.

They both loved to play cards and crochet, making afghans, sweaters and bonnets for their kids, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

They were good mothers, devoted to their children and each other’s.

"They showed us unconditional love," Sandy said.

From Destin, Florida, Jean's daughter, Judy Neisch, said the sisters told each other everything. They kept no secrets.

And whenever they were together, they would giggle like they were girls. It was contagious, Judy said. In restaurants, even diners at other tables would laugh.

“They were just a hoot,” Judy said, “the two of them together.”

♦ ♦ ♦ 

In 2007, Bobbie was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and by 2012, she had moved into a memory care home.

That year, the card was delivered to Sandy’s house. She took it to her mom. Bobbie didn’t remember everything or everyone, but she recognized her children.

And she remembered the card.

Bobbie remembered her sister, too. When they talked over video calls, Bobbie would reach out and touch Jean’s face on the screen.

Sandy took the card home with her, worried it could get lost or accidentally thrown out. She had it still when Roberta Ann "Bobbie" Snider died on Nov. 21, 2012, at the age of 92.

Sandy and her siblings picked out an urn with an angel wrapped around it. Sandy thought it was beautiful and texted a picture of it to her cousins.

Before burying her mother at the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona with her father, who had died in 2011, Sandy cut a sliver from the right side of the Valentine’s Day card and slipped it inside the urn.

Jean Evelyn Coppins died two months later, on Jan. 16, 2013. She was 94. Her children found the same urn Bobbie had been buried in, the one with the angel on it, for their mom. Judy thought she would have liked that.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Sandy Mettille poses for a picture with a Valentine's Day card that has been exchanged between her mom and aunt for decades at her home. After both passed away their daughters have now taken up the tradition.

In 2013, with Valentine’s Day approaching, Sandy took the card out of a file folder where she'd put it for safekeeping. She slid it out of the envelope, last addressed in Jean's script.

The card was 72 years old and fragile. The white paper had yellowed, but the colors of the flowers and birds hadn't faded. The red feather, fitted into a slit on the front, was still bright.

Sandy ran her fingers over it.

It had been so important to the sisters. A connection between them. Even when they were miles apart.

Sandy picked up the phone and called Judy. She told her cousin that she was looking at their mothers' card.

“Why don’t we keep sending it?” Sandy asked.

Judy didn't hesitate. Of course, they should. “I was honored to do that,” Judy said.

That Valentine's Day, the card, postmarked in Phoenix, arrived in the mail in Destin, Florida, where Judy spends winters.

When Judy got the card home to Michigan, she cut a narrow strip from the bottom of the card and tucked it inside her mother’s urn. Jean was buried in the same grave with her husband, who died in 1983.

The Valentine’s Day card, a piece of it at least, would be with the sisters always.

Judy Neisch holds the Valentine's Day card that has been exchanged among her family members for the past 80 years. It was first passed between Neisch's mother and aunt beginning in 1941. When the two women died within months of each other, Neisch and her cousin, Arizona resident Sandy Mettille, took up the family tradition.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

In February, Sandy packed the card carefully in a padded envelope, inserting cardboard to prevent it from bending. She sent it from Phoenix on Feb. 5, paying extra for a tracking number so she could monitor its progress.

It arrived in Destin, Florida, at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 9. Sandy knew it before Judy and called to tell her.

Judy picked it up at the desk of the high rise where she and her husband, Richard, have stayed for 19 years. She teared up as she opened it.

Sandy estimates the card has traveled more than 130,000 miles, between Arizona and Michigan and Arizona and Florida. She marvels that it has never gone astray.

Judy usually slaps a couple of stamps on it and puts it in the mailbox. 

"Next year, will you please send it with a tracking label?" Sandy asked when she called. Judy promised she would.

Sandy was relieved. It's so much more than a card.

Cousins Judy Neisch and Sandy Mettille continue their mothers’ tradition, begun in 1941, of exchanging the same Valentine’s Day card with each other.

It's a reminder, timely for Valentine's Day, Sandy said. Children learn to nurture relationships from their families. People can disagree and still love one another.

"Unconditional love is the most precious gift we can give or be given, and it’s a connection to always respect and treasure," Sandy said. "That's the gift our moms gave us."

Their gift to their mothers is to continue that tradition in a lot of ways: Jean's deviled eggs at Easter, Bobbie's brown sugar tarts, family gatherings at holidays, saying, "I love you more." And an old, heart-shaped card.

“Remember when we two were kids —  

And all the scraps we had?

Remember all the good times, too,

That used to make us glad?"

This year marks 80 years the card has been mailed back and forth.

"Maybe we can make it to 100 if Sandy and I live long enough," Judy said. The cousins are 74.

After that, perhaps their younger sisters will keep it going or the grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

Sandy thinks the sisters would be thrilled to know about the card.

“That card was so important to the two of them,” Sandy said.

And a year from now, the card will find its way back to Sandy, a tradition that endures for the love of their mothers.

"Here’s something else that I recall –

I thought a lot of you!

Don’t you forget that, either,

'cause, doggone it, I still do!”

Follow reporter Karina Bland on Twitter @KarinaBland

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